World And Town Part 16

"You going for pizza? Burgers? What?" He glances across the street at a Mexican restaurant; his pupils are the dark bright of sungla.s.ses. "I'll pa.s.s on the tacos. No burritos today, nope. Gracias."

"Don't be actin', Bong!" Now it's Sophy who looks away.

Mum says something in Khmer from behind her seat belt. Her tone is mild, her manner is mild; she does not say more than ten words in all. Though her window's half up, she doesn't roll it down; neither does she turn her head. Still, Sarun heeds her in a way that he didn't his sister. Not answering, exactly-he doesn't answer. But he does straighten up, stretching. He looks off at the bus station. Then finally, hunched over, elbows on the car door, he thrusts his face in the half-open window and talks, looks off, talks some more, looks off. Riding a donkey, looking for a horse, Hattie's father would say, but if you saw him from a distance you might almost think him flirting.

Mum blinks, her handkerchief in her lap.

"All right," he says. "I hear you."

And with that he climbs into the backseat of the car, next to Gift, asking would Hattie shut that noise. "That Goya s.h.i.+t," he calls it.

A kind of talk Hattie doesn't like, but all right. For today, a house special: no lecture, she just turns off the music. Gift, happily, doesn't seem to mind. Sarun's doing gymnastics with him-launching him from his knees to the ceiling, flying him around like an airplane. Gift squeals and squeals. It's the kind of overexcited vocalizing that used to end, with Josh, in a tantrum. But Gift doesn't go over the edge. It's Sarun who tuckers out-still playing, but more and more mechanically, until finally, when they stop for pizza, Sophy takes over. She touches Gift's nose, blows on his face, lets him play with her s.h.i.+rt strap. He climbs in under her s.h.i.+rt, making noises. Everyone else is silent, though the atmosphere once they're back in the car is growing lighter; maybe it's just that as Hattie drives faster, everyone's hair is whipping and blowing. In any case, something feels to be streaming away. Mum puts her hand up, keeping her hair from her face, and yet no one moves to close a window. Y xn y y, Hattie's father would have said-one heart, one will.

A moment of grace, Hattie's mother would have said.

Sophy brings a plateful of food over to Hattie the next day, to say thanks. Everyone, she reports, is fine. Her mother in particular is happy.

"Sarun knows her heart," Sophy says. "She doesn't have to say anything. He knows her heart."

Then she nods to herself and smiles a private smile-her own gaze inward, as if on her own known heart.

Hattie hums and goes looking for her wetsuit. Time to see if the lake's warm enough for a swim.

No need to go looking for Everett; this problem male hulks at the corner like a trading-post bear. He's wearing an unfrayed sweats.h.i.+rt and a buoyant blue feed hat but his jeans are all grease and wrinkles, his bootlaces all knots and creativity; and there's something unsettled and unsettling in his normally mild glance.

"Mind if I walk, too," he says.

To which the walking group replies, No, no, of course, though-a man in their midst! And a man who wants something. They maintain an unaccustomed silence as they head down the main road and over the culvert. They pa.s.s the big field. They pa.s.s the four corners. They pa.s.s the new speed-limit sign that had to be put up after the other one got run over. They wave hi to Judy Tell-All driving by in her exhaust-spewing pickup; and is that Jill Jenkins out in a car with Neddy Needham? Who's a lot less of a puffball since he started his crash fitness course; and what a nice sport wagon he drives, with a bike rack and a sunroof. And now look.

"Two-timing Carter?" asks Beth, quietly. "Having a side dish?"

Hattie shrugs.

"Because isn't Carter seeing Jill? That's what I heard."

Da gun-detachment. "I'm trying not to know," says Hattie.

"You're what?" says Beth.

Above them, the clouds darken, then lighten, then darken, then lighten. There's no one more bipolar than Mother Nature, Lee would say. But never mind-Everett is still keeping pace with them. Not hurrying them. Just kind of keeping them company, though their pace can't be his pace. There's a grace to the man, thinks Hattie. If only all men knew what he knows. Though maybe that's his trouble, or related to it-his obligingness. A willingness that can turn mulish. Hattie minds him less with every step, in any case, and can almost believe the group could walk the rest of the walk the way they're walking now, preoccupied.

But finally Greta asks, "Is there something on your mind?"-tilting her head in her Greta-like way. Lee's first lines showed up around her mouth-all those faces she made. Greta's, in contrast, are forming zip across her forehead, and what surprise is that? When she spends every day lifting her eyebrows, as now, with interest.

Everett straightens his hat. "Ginny kicked me out."

"No kidding." Beth slows up. "Did she really?"

"I am so sorry to hear that," says Hattie.

Greta throws her braid behind her back, a sign of concern. "So where are you living now?"

"In a tent. Here I built that house with my own two hands, with my own two hands." Everett holds them up. "And what did it get me?" His normally shaven face is unshaven. "A tent," he says. "I'm neighbors with a rosebush."

Beth stops dead. "A rosebus.h.!.+" she exclaims. "We're going to have to do something about that!"

"A hydrangea'd be great," Everett says drily.

"She means about the tent," says Greta. "Is there something we can do about the tent?"

"Nothing wrong with a tent," he says.

They walk a bit more, their eight arms swinging. The mist s.h.i.+nes brilliant; the sky is like a light box. Then it blinks off.

"You're upset," says Hattie, finally.

"She changed the locks on me, Hattie," says Everett. "She changed the locks."

"That's outrageous!" says Beth. "What gives her the right?"

"She says the house is hers. Says the money came from her farm so it's hers."

"When you've been married for thirty-seven years?" says Hattie.

"You remembered."

"That is not right," says Greta.

" 'Course, she's said stuff like that before," says Everett. "It didn't just start. But the locks, now." He shakes his head. "The locks're a development, see. They're a development."

"You're going to have to fight that," says Greta, firmly.

"Am I," he says. "Take her to court, right?"

"Exactly."

"Well, guess I'm going to need a phone line, then-what do you think? And maybe a lawyer. Think I'll need a lawyer?" He winks.

"You will," says Greta.

"A lawyer need payment?" he says-his mock earnestness a little like Sarun's, thinks Hattie, only with a different laugh. "We can help you with the fees," says Greta. "You can use my phone," says Hattie.

But Everett gives a sideways jerk of his head, as if trying to get a fly off his neck. "Guess what I'm going to do to thank her," he goes on.

Hattie pictures his clothes hung up all over, like last time.

"Kill myself," he says instead. Calmly-with an air of satisfaction, even. A kind of grin cuts across his face.

Still, Beth looks him in the eye. Long way up as it is, she telescopes herself skyward, like a mother talking to a grown son, and says, "You are not."

And Everett, sure enough, takes a more or less immediate interest in his shoelace knots. "Might as well, now," he says and starts walking on. "Wouldn't you say? Might as well. I gave her my life. Gave her everything I had. Don't you think if she was going to dump me at the end she should've warned me?"

"You're saying you gave her your love and it wasn't returned," says Beth. "You're saying you were-" Her face goes blank.

"Used," he says, helpfully. "I was used."

It's drizzling out. Mizzling, Lee would say.

"Though maybe things just changed?" tries Greta. "Because things do change. Like didn't she find Jesus? Isn't that at least part of what happened?"

"And maybe she did love you," agrees Hattie, supportively. "Maybe she loves you still." She pauses. "I mean, I know it's hard to tell."

"She used me up," he insists.

"Or maybe she didn't love you but didn't know that she didn't?" says Greta.

"She knew," he says. "She knew. But she was just obeying the will of G.o.d, see. Following orders. She was just following orders."

It starts to shower. Hattie can feel the damp in her joints, and water is organizing itself into beadlets on Greta's fleece jacket. Only Everett's sweats.h.i.+rt is getting soaked through, though, the water capping his shoulders and belly.

"That is just crazy!" says Beth. "That is just nuts!"

"It's horrifying," agrees Greta, quietly. Rain or no rain, she looks up, her eyes s.h.i.+ning gray like the sky but with fine streaks of gold. "Horrifying."

"I am just so sorry," says Hattie.

They all walk on, their hands in their pockets, as if wet hands are a particular concern. Cars shhush past.

"I wasted my life," says Everett.

"The whole thing?" Beth's nose drips. "You can't have wasted the whole thing."

"Thirty-seven years anyway," he says-water dripping off the bill of his hat, too. "So what would you call that-most of it? Could you say I wasted most of it?" His voice is calm enough.

Still, Hattie remembers how suddenly he went stomping off at Millie's and is careful.

"That's a long time," she says. "And maybe you did waste your life-who knows. Because people do, it's true. Make mistakes. Marry wrong."

The downpour lets up as suddenly as it started; and out comes the sun then, like a strange, late guest-half pleats of light, half swords.

"See things too late," Hattie goes on, squinting. "Waste their short time on earth. And who even cares, right? Who realizes?"

"Who gives a rat t.u.r.d." Everett shades his eyes. And he's right-who's ever going to know his heart? Or Hattie's, either, for that matter? Mum-unlucky as she's been in so many ways-is lucky in this one.

Sarun knows her heart. She doesn't have to say anything. He knows her heart.

Greta and Beth are quiet.

"Of course, you did raise those great kids," says Hattie. Everett nods.

"But think Ginny'll ever see?" she asks. "Think she'll see how she kept you around when it was convenient but kicked you out when it wasn't?"

Everett laughs a bleak laugh. "Cows'll fly before she sees. But I want you to tell her anyway."

"What she's done." He nods. "I want you to tell her."

"You want her to see."

He hesitates. "Cows'll fly before she sees," he says again.

"I'll tell her anyway," says Hattie. Remembering how she hesitated last time-you're hedging!-but determined to do better this round.

"Much obliged, Hattie," he says. "I'm much obliged."

And that, it seems, is what he came for, because at the next corner, he disappears into the strange light.

He said he's going to kill himself over you," says Beth at the Come 'n' Eat. "Or not over you. To get back at you. He said he's going to kill himself to get back at you."

Ginny works on her peach pie. She's wearing a bright pink T-s.h.i.+rt and looks to have just had her hair done, but her face is tired and slack, and her ears, which she usually keeps covered up, are showing. She has big ears-Buddha ears.

"He said he spent his whole life loving you, and that if you weren't going to love him back, you should've told him. Instead of keeping him around. Letting him waste his life. Or if not the whole thing, most of it." Beth can bike sixty miles a day but confronting a friend is something else. Her voice trails off.

"He said you locked him out," says Greta, taking over. Her back's straight, and her head's up; her braid falls like a cataract. "He said he's living in a tent."

"In a tent?" Grace's eyes are so round with amazement, she looks almost bewildered or pained.

"He said you said the house was yours, even if he built it." Hattie looks straight into Ginny's green eyes. "He said you used him. Used him up."

"Is that right." There's a white stripe across Ginny's ring finger where her wedding band used to be.

"He said he gave his life to your marriage, and that if you were going to dump him at the end, you should've said so. That you shouldn't have let him waste his whole life. We said that maybe you loved him, or that maybe things changed. Or that maybe you didn't love him but didn't know you didn't love him." Hattie tries to maintain a certain tone-not accusing Ginny of anything, but not groping like Beth, either. "But he said you said you did. You did know."

"Well, maybe I did and maybe I didn't." Ginny sets her mug down, speaking calmly-adopting Hattie's tone as if borrowing a cookie recipe. "But, you know, I was only doing the will of the Lord."

"That's what he said."

"Then we agree. And if Everett had been with Jesus, he'd have known what there was to know himself, wouldn't he? It's been his choice, to remain in ignorance and darkness. It's been his choice." She leans forward and sighs. "He's an obstinate man, that Everett. I know the Lord's given him to me for a reason. I know he's my trial. But honestly"-she bows her head-"that man's made me suffer."

"He's made you suffer!" Greta bangs her cup down.

And Hattie almost laughs. Hogwas.h.!.+ But instead she says, "You wronged him and now you refuse to see how. You refuse to see him, you refuse to see that you don't see"-trying to say what Everett wanted her to say, trying to remember what that was, though the trying's tripping her up. Hattie gone batty just when she would rise and fight again! She is more frustrated than she's been in a long time.

A sign of life, probably. Still, there's Ginny draining down her cup. Pus.h.i.+ng back her chair. Reaching for her walker. For mine is the Power and the Glory. She no longer looks tired as she puts a couple of worn-out dollar bills on the table; quite the contrary, she appears quite revived, giving a gay toodle-doo as she leaves, which several people can't help but return out of habit.

"He's made her suffer!" explodes Greta again, brandis.h.i.+ng the end of her braid.

"And hasn't it been his choice to remain in ignorance and darkness," fumes Hattie. "Hasn't he brought this all on himself."

Grace sneezes. "Sometimes I don't know about that church of hers," she agrees, pulling out a shamrock-print handkerchief.